same sex marriage bill, already passed by the MD House; Governor O'Malley will sign the bill, but it is expected that it will go to referendum.

I hate the whole concept of putting basic human rights up for a vote; I hope the majority of Marylanders who vote feel the same way and Maryland can be added to the list of states that recognize the right of all people to have equal rights before the government.

I would wonder how many states would stone adulterous women, publicly hanging black and brown people, and a whole lot of really horrible stuff given the chance to vote on it. Certainly a few would ban gay entirely.

The good news, in 10/15 years the marriage thing will be a past issue, with all states allowing some form of same sex marriage. All these clowns will have wasted so much energy and treasure defending a single word.

The bad news, those same people who were/are on the wrong side of the debate will have some new cause to make the rest of us nutz over and like every other non-nonsensical cause they love, will eventually go down in flames...

issue?
Personally I think it time for the government to get out of the marriage business.
Everyone should have civil unions.Leave marriage to the church.
On Morning Joe this morning link A very spirited discussion.
When I married my husband ED, my vows was to God, not the government. If same sex couple have a minster or priest willing to marry them, it's fine with me.

As long as the United States treats marriage as a legal contract that provides the couple with rights and benefits that are denied to those who are not married, then yes, it is a civil rights issue.

When you married you made your vows to god, but the government is the entity that provided you and your husband with the many privileges reserved to the married.

I'm all for a national change that makes the legal union between two people, call it marriage or civil unions or whatever, a matter involving the state and requiring that the ceremony be presided over by a government official and not by a priest, minister, rabbi, iman or any religious figure.

All couples would get married by a judge or a justice of the peace or a county clerk or the mayor or whatever government official was tasked to perform marriages. The marriage license would be issued by the government and signed by the presiding official.

Then, if the couple wanted their marriage blessed by their religion, and they could find a religious person who would perform that ceremony, they could follow the civil ceremony with a church wedding.

Until we adopt this very sensible plan, though, marriage as we know it must be available to all, regardless of sexual orientation. This will not require religious officials to perform any marriage they don't want to perform.

As things stand now, no religious official has any legal obligation to perform any particular weddings. In my own Catholic family, people have been denied a Catholic wedding because their intended is divorced. There are ministers who will not perform weddings unless at least one of the couple is a member of that religion. Legalizing same-sex marriage would not change that.

I have a problem with prenups. How is this allowed in a marriage. I vowed til death do us part.
My vows came from the bible. How can you have this in a government contract? Separation of church and state.
I just feel were fighting the wrong fight. Fight for equal rights for all with civil unions.
I would like to see a bill changing the name to civil unions from marriage.

equal rights to everyone, it devalues the people to whom those rights have not been granted, and the only reason I can think of that makes that inequity acceptable to those who oppose equality is that they believe they actually are better and more deserving of rights that others are denied.

I understand that people object to same-sex marriage for religious reasons, but rights devolve from the government, not from the church. Your vows come from the church, but your rights come from the government. And just as having the right to choose abortion doesn't mean one has to have one, having the right to marry someone of the same sex doesn't mean anyone who doesn't want to will be forced to. We don't make straight couples get married, do we?

And we don't force anyone to be united in the religious sacrament of marriage, either. If this religion or that religion doesn't want to perform same-sex unions, they aren't required to.

As for the decision to have a pre-nuptial agreement, that's a legal and financial one that has been necessitated to a great degree by the reality that people don't stay married to the same person forever - some stay married until death, some divorce. And the further reality is that without good planning - including prenups - financial issues and issues of inheritance can rip families apart. It is a gift for people to put plans in place to make sure (1) their wishes and intent are carried out and (2) that disasters like the children of the second husband inheriting the estates their father left their mother and she would have wanted to go to her children. That happens - and it's ugly.

The only marriage that matters to me, really, is my own; whether others marry, or whom the choose to marry? None of my business - I don't get a say.

And as much as I hate the idea of people getting to vote on whether other people can have the same rights they do, if the same-sex marriage law does go to referendum in MD, as it is expected to, I will vote for the law, not against it. It won't change my marriage one iota, won't degrade what I have with my husband, won't recruit anyone to play for the other team - it just means that, just as people of color have the same rights as Caucasians, gay people will have the same rights as their straight counterparts.

...the legal and financial rights that are being denied to citizens because of religion. From not insuring same sex spouses, to granting parental rights to one parent, to tax issues, to end of life decisions, to estate/heir issues should one spouse die.

In Texas a couple years back a fireman died, and right before his death it was discovered his wife was a transgender. He was aware, but his ex decided to investigate their shared children's new mom. The family got everything, around a million dollars, and the woman he married got absolutely nothing. All because they were deemed not legally married. Even though they lived as husband and wife and no one, except the ex, knew they were not legally man and woman in Texas.

Did I mention the firefighter died in the line of duty ? And his conservative family honored him by screwing over the love of his life.

When my aunt's second husband died, we found out that after she had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's - and she was well into it by the time she got diagnosed - he told his lawyer that "they" wanted to change their Wills. A Will that she had had for some 25 years, in which she provided for him during his life, if he survived her, with the remainder at his death (or at her death if he predeceased her) to her brothers and to me and my brother (she had no children, and both my uncles predeceased her, so it would have all come to my brother and me), was revoked and replaced with one that left everything to his alma mater.

His Will was a mirror of hers.

If she had left her estate to a charity or charities I knew she actually cared about, I would be fine - but his alma mater meant nothing to her - not to mention that I know she had no idea what she was signing.

Fast forward to a year or so after the new Wills were done. He's reconciled with the daughter from whom he was estranged for many years, my aunt's in the hospital and it looks like she's going to die before he does. So he has another Will done, leaving his estate not to his alma mater, but to his daughter. The greedy old coot thinks he's going to inherit the house and the rest of my aunt's estate, and he can leave it all to his daughter. Forget about the years and years of including him in all of our family events - birthdays and holidays, of assisting them when things got difficult. Forget about her family, what she would have wanted - just get as much as you can for yourself, right?

He also, in trying to qualify my aunt for Medicaid, transferred what used to be joint assets purchased with her money into an annuity that would first go to the Commonwealth of Virginia to the extent it had paid out for my aunt's care, and whatever was left over would go to the daughter and his three grandchildren.

Well, he died first, with not much of an estate; I made a claim on his estate on my aunt's behalf for the statutory amounts to which she was entitled.

Now that she has died, what little she had left will go to the university; we could contest the Will, but by the time we got through it, a victory would be moral only, and we'd be out a boatload of money in the process.

This man was an utterly selfish, pitiful excuse for a human being, who made my aunt's last years before she went into the nursing home one of isolation and deprivation, and I'd like to be sorry that he died alone in the house and wasn't found for over a week, but you know what? I'm not.

I heard this singer on Terri Gross the other day and fell in love. Catherine Russell, new record is Strictly Romancin'. It has old jazz/swing standards with that old-timey feel, like a soundtrack from a Woody Allen movie.

I bought it immediately and am thoroughly enjoying it.

From the interview I learned her parents are both musicians, and he mother, now in her 80s or 90s, was in an all-girl band back int he day. Really interesting episode of Fresh Air, I'm sure you can find it on the NPR web site.

Marco Rubio was baptized in the Mormon Church when he was eight years old. Confirmed in a Catholic Church, and often attends a Baptist Church. Now he can be the Mormon/Catholic/Baptist candidate of the future.

And in case you had Lt. Col Danny Davis pegged as some kind of peace seeking soldier, check out the cojones on this guy. And I can't believe he thinks that all of his communications should be classified, but he has giant cojones so maybe that's why.

So he hates COIN and General Petraeus too. So what, at this point he deserves to have his military career utterly nuked. And see, Tom Ricks gets access. Michael Hasting....no access, just shooting from the hip all day and all night. I hope he doesn't shoot his eye out.

"unearthed certain truths" about Colonel Davis or that what was unearthed on him was gift wrapped and left on his desk? As I indicated in the earlier post, the intentions of Davis may not have been golden but he did present the perspective of an active duty officer. The article by Joseph Collins, a retired Army Colonel, that was posted by Ricks is not the first to impeach Davis or his memo. I am not sure, in this case, if Ricks was getting access or serving as conduit. In any event, Davis does not appear to be in line for rapid promotions.

the article by retired Colonel Collins, as posted by Tom Ricks, might have taken the rebuttal further than counting the number of pages that were not about Afghanistan (41) and those about surges (29) as if they had no bearing whatsoever on the 84 page text. The published report of Colonel Davis, that was presented to Congress and the public, would seem to merit something other than an "impeach the witness" or he said, he said, defense. I note, too, that not all commenters to Collins' article entirely agreed with him.

sent General Abizaid an invasion plan to airdrop tanks into Iran and then drive them into Tehran, and who was a reservist, and who thought he should be promoted to lead the invasion....has had some personality problems for a long time.

I think this is only the beginning of learning about Lt. Colonel Danny Davis. And I know this, everything on Tom Ricks blog is fact checked extensively. And he probably has copies provided to him by someone with a last name starting with an "A" that he used to fact check. There is a huge difference between Tom Ricks and Michael Hastings.

And if Danny Davis has been sort of CooCoo, don't think anyone in the U.S. military is going to cover for a few short comings at this point.

befuddling. I understand that you find Hastings to be an unreliable egotist and that now you seem to have changed your opinion on Colonel Davis suggesting that he may be coo coo. But, how does that square with your previous admonition that "equating Hastings work to the work of Danny Davis is such an insult to the military in general and the real work our soldiers do." Unless, you are getting into degrees of coo coo.

yet. Because of the early press reporting I assumed they had all background checked him. I should not have assumed that. And because he was a military officer putting his career in jeopardy I figured he was fairly solid alongside the early press reporting.

Also, because I know that no day in Afghanistan is perfect, I assumed it was possible that an ethical military officer could walk away from the situation finding such fault with some commanders. I had the time this afternoon to read the report, that was how I found Tom Ricks writings on Danny Davis. I was shocked!

I did not know until this afternoon that Michael Hastings has been all over the Danny Davis bandwagon either. I found a video of Michael Hastings from CNBC when I began investigating Danny Davis further. I assume you knew though, but maybe I assume incorrectly here too. I did not know yet that Hastings was championing Davis, but am I surprised that Danny Davis now appears to be more than slightly flaky and that Michael Hastings is his champion? Why should I be? It pretty much fits Michael Hastings' recent "journalistic" history like a glove.

I would expect things we find out about Lt. Colonel Danny Davis to get a whole lot more revealing real quick too. You don't get to disagree with the President of the United States on his chosen war strategies while you serve in his military's uniform and then ratphuck all of them and have them protect you and your history.

I expect the story of who Danny Davis really is and has been to be sort of stunning. What an ego. Who knows where he went with that thing and what other "plans" that also involved him being promoted he sent to other Generals. This might end up being a real hoot.

Monster show tomorrow night at the legendary Apollo...a tribute to the late great Hubert Sumlin, Howling Wolf's longtime guitar player. Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, & Derek Trucks slated to perform...holy f8ckin' cow! Obama ain't bad for an amatuer, but I don't think he can pull off the Wolf;)

Gonna suck missing that one, but being already booked for Steve Wynn and The Miracle 3 at Bowery Electric ain't too shabby at all. They will blow that joint out! Bringing a posse too, 11 degenerates confirmed. Err, 10 generates and my goody two shoes big sister. Every party needs a pooper to tell us how much we reek comin' out the backalley pre-show;)

Lin's worst performance...he didn't like the backcourt pressure by Superintendent Chaulmers, looked very uncomfortable all night. Freakin' Bosh couldn't miss. Let you guys get too many easy baskets in transition, and ya killed us on the offensive boards.

Thought we would make a game of it in the 2nd Qtr when Stevie Novak hit those three quick threes and we took the lead...but the second half was all Heat.

Look forward to the next meeting when we've had more time to gel, and hopefully settle on a rotation. We can't be playing ten guys when Shump comes back.

starters got a lot of rest in garbage time the night before...if anything it was that swarming Heat defense that gassed them. Easy buckets were hard to come by...that Anthony guy was blocking shots left and right all night.

I understand what everyone was talking about. Thank you Blue Cross for the 8.5% rate hike. I'm 26 years old and pay $200/month for a $5000 deductible 50% coinsurance policy. Pretty great that I can either afford prescription medication (which isn't covered because a basic policy doesn't cover mental health and it was a pre-existing condition) or my insurance policy but not both.

I have a German sister-in-law, and from talking to her, medical care in Western European countries far surpasses our system. And I know that Canada is the same. Universal health care is the way to go. I never cease to be amazed that the USA seems to think that buying "health insurance" from mostly profit-making organizations (and even the non-profits here are not very good) is a way to ensure decent health care. "Insurance" is okay when you are talking about insuring your car or your house. It's nuts when you are insuring your health. Insurance companies are out to make a profit. This is not necessarily to disparage them- they are answerable to their stock-holders, and if they lose money, the executives will be replaced. If you are not going to be profitable for them, they are not going to want you, or they will charge so much that you cannot afford to use them. Health care should not be beholden to this system. To me, it is a basic human right.

Unfortunately I work in food service so I doubt I'd be valuable enough to be able to emigrate. I do have a EU passport though but I'm not really liking the mood in Europe either politically so not really sure. It really does suck to have this kind of stress about something that really shouldn't be a day-to-day issue. And f*ck those politicians in Washington who have no idea what's its like to live paycheck to paycheck and have to make these kinds of decisions.

One of the nation's leading electronic privacy groups claimed this week that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) misled members of Congress during a recent hearing on whether the Department is paying a defense contractor $11.4 million to keep tabs on protected free speech and dissent against government policies on the Internet.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), which triggered the hearing by publishing a trove of secret government documents in January, told Raw Story on Thursday that a second round of documents they've obtained directly contradicts testimony given on Feb. 16, showing that the DHS instructed their analysts to do exactly what the Department denied.

"There were several exchanges that they had with members of Congress in which they sort of distanced themselves from the idea -- that they weren't engaging in this monitoring of public reaction to government proposals," McCall told Raw Story. "But that's... Well, it's not true, according to the documents we obtained."

As for Huntsman, he talks a good third party game but then turns around and backs Romney. Still a loyal Republican who can't find the courage to act on his convictions. Nice guy though and smart. I like him more than the curious Ron Paul who probably isn't quite the libertarian some liberal-libertarians perceive him to be. But I do find it interesting to consider that he might well be the reincarnation of Patrick Henry -- you do see a physical resemblance as well as an ideological similarity (h/t Walter Semkiw).

The numbers don't make sense, how can the two states with the largest populations not be on top ?

I'm not fighting for Texas, but California, it simply doesn't make sense, unless people couldn't choose their own state. And really, politics play in the viewing of a state, are republicans taking it to Texas and Alabama for vacation because the politics in Blue states are too much to bear ?

Hawaii and Alaska make sense, and congrats Donald on choosing to live in the most liked state.

I have been meaning to ask, what is a gallon of petro going for these days ?

As U.S. and Israeli officials talk publicly about the prospect of a military strike against Iran's nuclear program, one fact is often overlooked: U.S. intelligence agencies don't believe Iran is actively trying to build an atomic bomb.

A highly classified U.S. intelligence assessment circulated to policymakers early last year largely affirms that view, originally made in 2007. Both reports, known as national intelligence estimates, conclude that Tehran halted efforts to develop and build a nuclear warhead in 2003.

The most recent report, which represents the consensus of 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, indicates that Iran is pursuing research that could put it in a position to build a weapon, but that it has not sought to do so.

Although Iran continues to enrich uranium at low levels, U.S. officials say they have not seen evidence that has caused them to significantly revise that judgment. Senior U.S. officials say Israel does not dispute the basic intelligence or analysis.

First up was Gov Jennifer Granholm talking about the insane extremism of GOP candidates on social/women's issues. I think she should run for the senate at the next opening.

Next was Lanny Davis, this time making eminent sense as he trashed the recent four-hour PBS doc on Bill Clinton for spending more than 75% of airtime on bogus scandals and mentioning nothing about eight years of peace and prosperity. Piers disagreed but said he would prefer to have had Bill in the WH all this time.

Then doc filmmaker Sean Stone, son of my favorite director Oliver, talking about his conversion to Islam. But he describes himself as a Jewish Christian Muslim and so is trying to become a sort of interfaith goodwill ambassador to places like Iran where he has met with Ahmadinejad. Tough exchange with Piers who Sean accused of engaging in warmongering rhetoric. Thoughtful comments by Stone that an Israeli attack on Iran would lead to Russia intervening, perhaps setting off WW3. That's my worry as well.

6 months ago Uncle Sam stormed the Gibson Guitar factory armed to the teeth, seizing aka stealing half a million dollars worth of property, and shutting the factory down for alleged violations of the Lacey Act.

whether the wood was the correct level of thickness and finish before being exported from India?

Because

India is wanting to ensure that raw wood is not exported without some labor content from India," says Juskiewicz.

Well, that makes a lot of sense. How about we help India out on their exports here, making sure that there is "some labor content from India," and in return, we and India ensure that those American jobs which are now performed in India have "some labor content" from the United States? As in, bring the jobs back here, and then we'll help India out with their exports. Geez.